Cowboys, Yogis, and One-Legged Ski Bums: The Extraordinary Lives of Ordinary Coloradans

By Don Morreale

Cowboys, Yogis, and One-legged Ski Bums is a compilation of Don Morreale's popular YourHub/Examiner.com articles about the life and times of contemporary Coloradans. In addition to people who have somehow managed to triumph over extremely difficult circumstances, he writes about artists, athletes, thinkers, helpers, seekers, and ordinary folks smitten with peculiar passions. His stories uncover a rich cultural tapestry hidden in plain sight at the foot of the majestic Rocky Mountains.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499024005

Don Morreale

The son of a US Army chaplain, Don Morreale spent much of his childhood on military bases in Japan, Germany and Taiwan before settling in Colorado at the age of 14. He holds a bachelor’s degree in comparative religions from the University of Denver, and a master’s in creative writing from Denver University College. The author of two books on Buddhism in America, he teaches meditation both at home and worldwide aboard the ships of Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. He also writes a popular column about interesting local characters that appears weekly in the Denver Post YourHub, and on-line at Examiner.com. Cowboys, Yogis, and One-Legged Ski Bums is a compilation of some of his favorites.

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Copyright © 2014 by Don Morreale.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2014909381

ISBN:       Hardcover       978-1-4990-2401-2

       Softcover       978-1-4990-2402-9

       eBook       978-1-4990-2400-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Cover Illustration by

Hunter James

www.focusinstudios.com

Denver, Colorado

Rev. date: 07/01/2014

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART 1—Accidents, Epiphanies, and Life-Changing Experiences

1. Keli Rae survives impalement, lives to help others

2. Tim Rains, rescued at sea

3. Kiki Wetherbee: beautiful on the inside

4. James D. Chapman: The Buttonman Can

5. Star Ray Blake: jail time fosters a new ‘tude

6. Brandy Moore: serving a sentence of a different sort

7. Pete Ninemire gets a presidential pardon

8. Matt Kailey mans up

9. John Hoistion finds refuge in a church full of misfits

10. Garry Rudd: hit by lightning

11. Bob Haugen gets a message from the other side

12. Pamela Esquibel sees the Light

13. There’s a pickup truck in Marilyn Wells’s living room

14. The fall—and rise—of stuntman Mark Dissette

15. Gerald Garcia’s dog predicts, prevents seizures

16. Bill Mahoney takes 12-steps

17. Trish Rainbow’s trip through Cancerland

18. For ex-gangsta Tony Crocker, boot camp prompts a course change

PART 2—Paddlers, Twirlers, and Phone Pole Flippers

19. Maurice Mo’ Betta Wade: Goin’ down the road

20. Paul Brekus: The whole world smiles when you’re on a penny-farthing

21. Paralympic gold medalist Jason Regier: Murder ball saved my life

22. Jocelyn Gutierrez fights her way to self-respect

23. Marc Romero: one-legged ski bum

24. Mexican wrestler Joel Floriano gets back in the game

25. Lacey Henderson: I’m not disabled. I’ve just got one leg.

26. Tricia Downing: Redefining able

27. James Creasey: croquet’s the way for people with dementia

28. Kenny Rhoades takes the plunge

29. Wayne Staggs flips phone poles to stay fit

30. Jon Gates: grandfather of off-string yo-yo

31. Coby Crowley: dragon boating paddle-ista

32. Melissa Thomas: fighting dancer

33. Ashley Dolan: born to twirl

34. Paul Arell: old man on the mountain

35. Angela Cavaleri: half the woman she once was

36. Marathon runner Jason Romero: Who needs sight when you have vision?

37. Double lung transplant lets triathlete Gavin Maitlin breathe, compete

38. David Westman: bulldoggin’ drag queen

PART 3—Worm Farmers, Sign Spinners, and Shopping Mall Santas

39. Dennis James has an office in the sky

40. Bill Lee still believes in Santa Claus

41. Greg Storozuk: real-time ghost buster

42. Auctioneer Steve Linnebur is one fast talkin’ dude

43. Sign spinner Aaron Stuckner gives it a whirl

44. Claude Thompson: Denver’s King of Shine

45. Heather Rubald: Cute with a conscience

46. Chris Kermiet: Square dance calling’s in my blood

47. Jennifer Dempsey: Salida Circus all about the joy

48. Michelle Baldwin bares all

49. Dr. Rick Clarke builds drones in his basement

50. Max Donaldson: celebrity grave rubber

51. Sandi Wiese: the straight poop on worm farming

52. Suzanna DelVecchio: belly dance not just hootchy-kootchy

53. Nick Hodgdon: Crime Scene Cleaners mops up after mayhem

54. Flair helps bartender Mike Guzman beat back cancer

55. Window washer Chris White gets a view from the top

56. Eva Hoffman rides the rails

57. Aiko Kimura honors her ancestors through Taiko drumming

58. Steve Lower: real-life Magic Mike

59. Jen Kaminski: Pole dancing. It’s come a long way, baby

60. Trolley Tom Peyton: reviving Denver’s tramway past

61. Luthier Rock Eggen strives to build the perfect violin

62. Pilot Tom Mace: spreading the word across Colorado skies

63. Ed Ward’s marriage ceremonies: part religious ritual, part Broadway play

64. Mowing lawns: ideal career for entrepreneur Chet Grabowski

65. KUVO’s Linard Scotty Scott showcases black music from bebop to hip-hop

66. Tara Spencer takes the road to rodeo royalty

67. Phil Tedeschi talks to the animals

68. Steve Bite-Size Carter is bigger than he looks

69. Mario Cabrera gets his dream car

70. Medical death examiner Kate Makkai learns the end of every story

71. Yakov Neyman serves up snappin’ dogs and sage advice

72. Jim Wagenlander fosters friendship between Mongolia and Colorado

73. Nadia Solsbery and Samuel Henderson: professional balloon benders

74. Susan Atkins: learning through sequential monogamy

75. Dr. Dongming Fan needles his patients back to health

76. LeeAnna Jonas: spirit realm investigator

77. Bill Chapman: Golden treasure hunter

78. Tom Fry: man of a thousand voices

PART 4—Painters, Poets, and a Dog Who Wants to Direct

79. Charles Parson: framing an epiphany

80. Poet Bill Tremblay: a place without guardrails

81. Painter Sam Morreale’s second act

82. Actor Paul the Dog: from wags to riches at the DCTC

83. Choreographer Garrett Ammon: dancing the imperfect self

84. Sculptor Ira Sherman: going to the places that scare you

85. Slam Poet Josiah JahLion: ain’t nothin’ but a love thing

86. Painter Bob Ragland: nonstarving artist

87. Painter Dan Ericson: Signtologist

88. Lori Kanary’s Lite Brite panels break Guinness Book records

89. Composer Laura Mangus: her music graces Argo film score

90. Arthur Jones deciphers Negro spirituals’ hidden messages

91. Paul Briggs: Denver’s most famous unknown artist

92. Painter Gary Michael tries his hand at narrative fiction

93. Cartoonist Ed Stein on life after the Rocky

94. Dan Johnson: one-man band for the digital age

95. Quilting pieces together Michael Gold’s life, memories

96. Lisa Rooney plays the nay

97. Mezzo soprano Jennifer DeDominici’s love-hate thing with opera

98. Laurie Gibb’s VW van: a rolling work of art

99. Aztec dancer Carlos Castañeda: holding the door open for the next generation

100. Poet SETH Harris explores the plus side of breaking the rules

101. Angelique Olin: ex-cop turned photographer maps landscape of human body

102. Christy Honigman celebrates the power of art to heal and transform

103. Annie Zook’s puppet theatre: not just another roadside attraction

104. Namita Khanna: architect brings classical Indian dance to Denver

105. Country singer Rudy Grant: some things matter more than a shot at the big time

106. Barb Donachy: involved in the bigger picture

PART 5—Panthers, Tigers, and Buffalo Soldiers

107. Bob Fuchigami: Camp Amache a bitter legacy for Japanese Americans

108. Jack Welner, holocaust survivor

109. Lauren Watson: rise of a radical

110. Phil Martinez: learning the lessons of war

111. Bob Kirtdoll: he was there for Brown v. Board of Education

112. Modern-day Wyatt Earp reenacts his great-grand uncle’s life story

113. Miriam Hoffman finds herself at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall

114. John Rasko takes a bullet in the heart

115. John Bell: go-to guy for the Buffalo Soldiers

116. John H. Yee: original Flying Tiger

117. Arthur McFarlane keeps legacy of iconic civil rights leader alive

118. Dr. Vincent Harding’s mission of encouragement

119. Denver mayoral candidate James Mejia: Sometimes losing is winning

PART 6—Food, Shelter, and a Decent Education

120. Magda King gets a view from the highest peaks

121. Claude d’Estree: old-time fiery abolitionist

122. City planner George Nez: Nobody should be without a roof over his head

123. Heather Forbes finds a new way to work with troubled adoptees

124. Rev. Diana Flahive addresses the plight of Denver’s homeless women

125. Douglas Eichelberger recycles plastic to house the world’s poor

126. Karen Stewart: at home in the world’s most dangerous places

127. Judy Beggs: educating the girls of Guéoul

128. John Moorhead: caring for Denver’s hurt and broken

129. Bill Huggins’s biked-based solution feeds the hungry

130. AIDS activist Penny DeNoble: Doing what I was preserved to do

131. Jacqueline St. Joan: fighting the injustice of honor killing

132. Foster Brashear: saving Colorado’s wild horses and burros

133. Tanya Diabagate: homeless experience leads to founding of Femicare Project

134. Launcelot Hawk takes the hot seat to help abused kids

135. Nico Novelli: no such thing as a disposable animal

136. Vicki Munroe aims to save the bees

PART 7—Hierophants, Healers, and Tap Dance Preachers

137. Alex Augustine sees dead people—seriously

138. Imam Ibrahim Kazerooni: tested by torture

139. Lisa Jones hears the voice in the whirlwind

140. Amma Thanasanti survives a bear attack

141. Leonard Barrett cures multiple sclerosis with meditation

142. Santidevi: Mother Mary comes to me

143. Sadananda: chaos has its own way

144. Carol Gansho O’Dowd discovers the mysterious workings of karma

145. Rev. David Sharp: tap dancing on the stairway to heaven

146. Meredith and David Vaughn take laughter seriously

147. Michael McGrath: uplifted by Christ

148. Steve Roth: witness to a miracle

149. Pastor Jim Rogers: heal the sick, raise the dead

150. Professor David Eller seeks a new image for atheism in America

151. Steven Kramer tunes in to vibrations of the universe

152. Rev. Jerry Herships holds church in a bar

153. David Stevens, Psychic Accountant

154. Lou Florez is the wizard next door

PART 8—Expats, Sailors, and Mongolian Sheep Counters

155. Devon Parson walks the Colorado Trail

156. Tibet journey teaches Andrew Holecek the curse of convenience

157. Lily Muldoon: coming of age in Kayafungo

158. World traveler Steve Bouey: Go big or go home!

159. John Baumann’s motorcycle odyssey to the end of the world

160. David Nichol’s year of living dangerously

161. Rich Reading: counting sheep in Outer Mongolia

162. Pinki goes to Hollywood

163. Colin Flahive: China is the new Wild West

164. Luke Eberl: chilling out in Inuvik

165. Kris Stenzel: Aurora Jungle Woman

166. Davy Davis: a birthday at the Holocaust

167. Sierra Brashear takes passion for trash to Zanzibar

168. PJ Parmar: 3 years, 50,000 miles, 101 countries

169. Doug Eliot: home is the sailor

170. Dennis Quinn heeds the call of the open road

ALSO BY DON MORREALE

Books

Buddhist America; Centers, Retreats, Practices (John Muir, 1988)

Complete Guide to Buddhist America (Shambhala, 1998)

Essays

Pipi La Pushe in Let them Eat Crepes, Edited by Melissa Doffing and Susan Koefod (Lulu, 2010)

China My Heart in Azuria, (Geelong Writers Inc., Summer 2013)

Bookends in The Miraculous 16th Karmapa, Edited by Norma Levine (Shan Shung Publications, 2013)

DEDICATION

For Nancy, my shipmate for life

IN MEMORIAM

Sam Morreale

Paul Briggs

Charles Nash

Every man’s memory is his private literature.

—Aldous Huxley

I speak in a poem of the ancient food of heroes: humiliation, unhappiness, discord. Those things are given to us to transform, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so.

—Jorge Luis Borges

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

By the fall of 2009, I was at loose ends. I’d completed the course work for a certificate in creative writing at Denver University College, and I wanted some real-world experience in writing and publishing before deciding whether to go on for a master’s degree. Enter Kevin Huhn a.k.a. the Moose, whom I met in a water aerobics class at Wash Park Rec Center. Moose had lost his job as manager of the sports page when the Rocky Mountain News finally bit the dust. He told me that a lot of the Rocky’s writers were now publishing in an online newspaper called Examiner.com. He suggested I start there. I followed his advice and am very glad that I did. So first of all, thanks, Kevin. Great advice.

While I’m on the subject, a special thanks to the folks at Examiner.com, who’ve been publishing my stories consistently since September 2009. It’s been an education.

I also want to give a shout out to Laura Keeney, who was for some time the editor of the Denver Post-YourHub. Laura made it a point to get in touch with me and to meet me for coffee and conversation concerning my articles, the newspaper business, and the future of publishing. Thanks, Laura, for your encouragement and advice. Thanks also to the rest of the gang at Denver Post-YourHub for publishing me pretty much every week since August 11, 2011.

In case you’re wondering, I did ultimately go back to DU for the master’s. For my capstone project, I chose to write a collection of stories much like the ones you see in this book. At that time, I was still thinking in terms of life-changing experiences, and my capstone advisor, Henry Rasof, did not make it easy for me. He wanted to know exactly how people’s lives were changed. He also urged me to write more extemporaneously, which turned out to be good advice. So thanks, Henry, for not making it easy and for helping me to define this project more clearly.

Then there are the Jets, a group of guys I’ve been hanging with for at least a dozen years. We meet for coffee a couple of times a week, and not infrequently, they’ll comment on one of my stories. Among the group is my good friend and fellow author, Andy Rooney, who has, on more than one occasion, read my rough drafts and given me constructive advice.

Finally, I want to give some props to the people whose stories you see in this book. It’s no easy thing to unbosom yourself in front of the world, so thank you all for your courage and candor and for letting me publish your stories.

Don Morreale

Denver, Colorado

April 2014

INTRODUCTION

Colorado is colorful in more ways than one. Right from the start, the region attracted its fair share of gold panners, gunslingers, oddballs, and seekers. It’s the kind of place you go to reinvent yourself. Where did the Beats go to discover themselves in the late ’40s, early ’50s? Dude… Colorado. And where did the gurus and yogis of the alternative consciousness movement come to establish their headquarters in the ’60s? Square State, baby.

Maybe it’s the mountains. Or maybe it’s the 250 days a year of sunshine we get here. I mean, where else do you see people walking around in shorts and T-shirts in the dead of winter? It beats freezing your nads off in Nebraska.

There’s also a fairly liberal and open-minded citizenry here. Colorado was the first state in the Union to legalize recreational marijuana. (Okay, we’re tied for first with Washington, but after the shellacking they gave us in the Super Bowl, I’m not inclined to give them any credit).

All of that having been said, I did not set out to write about the state’s odd balls, at least not in the beginning. In fact, my original idea was to write about otherwise ordinary people who happened to find themselves in circumstances that ultimately led to a transformation in their lives: the convicted drug dealer who gets a presidential pardon, the Vietnam vet who survives a bullet to the heart, the artist and entrepreneur who gets impaled on a metal spike and comes out of the ordeal with a newfound passion for helping women launch their own businesses.

As I went about interviewing people and writing their stories, I underwent something of a life changer myself. I was finding it more and more difficult to find people able, or willing, to interpret their experience through the prism of personal transformation. They might have had a traumatic event in their lives, but they had come to see it not as a line of demarcation, but as part of the ebb and flow of their day-to-day existence.

I remember one conversation in particular that brought this home to me. I contacted the PR department at the National Western Stock Show and asked to be put in touch with a rodeo cowboy, preferably a bull rider, who might have had a life-changing experience.

Honey, said the rep on the other end of the line, "cowboys don’t have life-changing experiences."

Sure they do, I argued. You get thrown off a bull. That right there’s a life-changing experience.

No, bubba, she drawled, barely able to contain her exasperation with the greenhorn on the other end of the line. Cowboy gets bucked off. He turns right around and gets back up on the danged thing.

Okay, maybe it was time to rethink the concept. So instead of asking people to tell me about their epiphanic moments, I decided to ask them how it was that they came to do what they do, be who they are, think what they think. That turned out to be much easier for people to grok. And it opened up a whole new world of stories for me to write about.

Each of the thumbnail bios contained in this book first saw the light of day on Examiner.com, an online news source with local editions in most major markets in the US and Canada (Google Denver Examiner Don Morreale for a complete archive of my stories, along with photos and slide shows). But I’m old school enough to believe that you haven’t really published something until it appears in print in a real-time newspaper or magazine.

Which is how it happened that in August 2011, I started sending my stories off to YourHub, a neighborhood supplement that appears in the Denver Post every Thursday morning. Much of the Hub’s content is supplied by freelancers like me, and as such, it represents an important source of local news and information. It’s also a dandy place for fledgling authors to get their work out in front of the public. Say what you will about the World Wide Web, there’s nothing quite like getting your stuff published in your hometown newspaper on a weekly basis. People see it and respond to it, and pretty soon you’re having a face-to-face conversation with your readers that you could never have as a content provider on the Web. I’m constantly running into people who tell me, "Hey, I saw your piece in the Hub this week. Great story. Where do you find these people?" That, my friends, is music to the ears of a freelance writer.

I hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. I’m glad you’ve decided to join me for the ride.

Don Morreale

Denver, Colorado

April 2014

PART 1

Accidents, Epiphanies, and Life-Changing Experiences

Keli Rae survives impalement, lives to help others

One sunny August afternoon in 2003, Denver artist Keli Rae was standing on the tailgate of her pickup truck when she felt what she describes as a mysterious force pushing on her chest.

Suddenly, I just flew off the truck and landed hard on a two-foot-long spike that was sticking up out of a tire about four feet away.

The spike entered her right buttock, tore through her uterus, punctured her bladder, fractured her pelvis, grazed her spine, intestines, kidney, liver, and heart, and came to rest just behind her left scapula.

It was like everything was happening in slow motion, she said. I could hear myself screaming. But inside my head, my mind was talking to me very calmly and rationally, telling me, ‘Don’t worry, it’s missing all of your vital organs. You’re going to be okay.’

When she hit bottom, her first impulse was to stand and get herself up off that spike. It was pretty gruesome, she said. There was blood and gore all over it.

She walked into the house and told her friend what had happened. He dialed 911, and within minutes, an ambulance was there.

But then the EMTs couldn’t get the gurney through the front door, she said. So I told them, ‘Just forget it. I’ll walk.’

Bleeding only moderately, she was able to get herself out the door and onto the gurney. But then settled in the ambulance, she went into deep shock; and by the time she arrived at the emergency room, she was lying in a pool of blood.

It took a team of five surgeons the better part of five hours to stitch her back together again. They had to clean each of my vital organs in turn and sew up my uterus and bladder, Rae said.

Horrific as it was, the accident was something of a medical miracle. Her surgeon, Dr. James Smith, told her that had he attempted to put the spike through her intentionally, he could not have missed all of her vital organs. It bypassed virtually everything that could kill me, paralyze me, or make me poop in a bag, she said.

Which is not to say that Rae emerged from her ordeal physically—or psychologically—unscathed. Even today, no matter what position I take—walking, sitting, standing still—I can’t get comfortable. I can’t rest. I’m in constant pain. I think of myself as broken.

One day, Rae’s daughter said, You know, Mom, Frida Kahlo thought of herself as broken too.

It was an apt comparison. Like Rae, the Mexican artist had been impaled by a metal pole in a bus accident in Mexico City in 1925. She was eighteen years old. She referred to the incident forever after as my deflowering.

I’ve come to feel a strong spiritual kinship with Frida, Rae said. I identify with her suffering. And both of us found our salvation through art. Unlike Kahlo, who started painting to pass the time while still in hospital, it took Rae three years before she felt well enough to make a piece of art.

I lived through this, Rae said. There’s a reason I survived, a purpose for my survival, and I mean to fulfill it.

Last winter, she opened the Coffee Nook at the Workshops in Glendale as a prototype for a chain of stores to be staffed by single moms.

I want to help them become financially self-sufficient, she said. I want to help them fulfill their dreams. Frida Kahlo’s passions were her art and her politics. Mine are my art and my desire to help others. That’s the whole purpose of life as far as I’m concerned, to help others.

Tim Rains, rescued at sea

On a Thursday morning in July of 1980, Denver photographer Tim Rains got blown off the deck of an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. He spent the next sixteen hours treading water and praying for a miracle.

His assignment on that day was to photograph basic ops on the flight deck of the USS Forrestal.

Most of the time, it’s boring stuff, he said, if a plane taking off from an aircraft carrier deck at two hundred miles per hour can be called boring. But still, it’s routine.

He saw a shot he wanted to take of an A-7 attack bomber in mid-turn and signaled the traffic control guy to get it to stop. Dropping down on one knee and aiming his camera, he felt hot exhaust coming his way and realized the plane was still in motion. Before he could fall flat, it caught him and blew him over the side. He fell sixty feet and entered the water headfirst.

All I could think going down, he said, was ‘Oh crap, I just dropped the navy’s $1,500 Canon F-1, and they’re gonna take it out of my paycheck.’

Popping up just in time to see his ship steaming over the horizon, he checked his watch: 10:00 a.m. He pulled a cord and inflated his life vest. Then he kicked off his boots, adjusted his helmet, pulled down his goggles, opened a dye pack, and turned on the strobe light attached to his vest.

I wasn’t afraid, he said, but I was angry that no one saw me go over and frustrated that there was nothing more I could do.

The water was in the high sixties, not frigid but cold enough that he’d have to keep moving to avoid hypothermia. When the sun set and no one had arrived to save him, he started thinking about swimming.

I felt like I had to contact my parents before the navy reported me lost at sea. I didn’t want to put them through that grief, and I sure as hell did not want to die out there.

Meanwhile, back on the Forrestal, nobody had any idea that he was even missing. It wasn’t until he failed to report for evening muster that they finally sent his crewmates out to look for him. For the next hour, his name was called every five minutes over the loudspeaker system in the off chance that he might be sacked out in one of the carrier’s 2,200 watertight compartments. It was after 9:00 p.m. before the captain finally called a man-overboard drill. But by now they were 160 miles away, and the sky was growing dark. Dark enough, as it happened, for Rains to identify the North Star.

I knew we were somewhere southeast of Spain, he said. I was able to coordinate with the North Star and get a fix on which direction I needed to swim.

Weak, hungry, and tired, but buoyed by the sense that he was at least making progress, he kept swimming. And then around 2:00 a.m., he heard the sound of a helicopter. He waved. The chopper came closer and dropped a two-man dive team. They hooked him up and hauled him aboard. He was only seven miles from the coast of Spain when they fished him out.

I could have made it, he said.

Interestingly, the helicopter was not from the Forrestal. It was from the Nimitz, another ship that just happened to be cruising in the area.

It was a total accident they found me, Rains said. They saw the strobe light on my shoulder and dropped down to investigate. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Long-term effects?

I was a lot more careful in how I did things after that, he said. It was a horrible ordeal, but I learned that there’s not a whole lot I can’t accomplish if I just calm down. It taught me how to work through adversity, and I came out of it knowing that I can overcome any difficulty.

Kiki Wetherbee: beautiful on the inside

If Kiki Wetherbee has a positive outlook, much of the credit is due to the way her mother, Janet, treated her as a child. She was born with a host of physical problems, most noticeable of which were a bilateral cleft palate and a clubfoot. To make matters worse, her eyes were set so far apart that my left eye couldn’t see past my nose to the right and vice versa. I’d stand in front of a blackboard, she said, and could only write to the center. Then I’d have to switch the chalk and finish the sentence with the other hand.

Her infantile facial disfigurement was so disturbing to her grandmother that she tried to cover her face with a blanket as they were leaving the hospital. Kiki’s mom promptly removed the blanket.

This child, she declared, will not be hidden. I’m going to show her off wherever I go. And show her off she did.

When I was six weeks old, she took me to one of those mall photographers who was taking baby pictures. Some lady with a perfect baby said, ‘How dare you bring that child out in public?’ and my mom said, ‘My kid’s just as beautiful as yours.’ She saw having a special-needs child as a privilege.

Even so, childhood was no trip to the candy store for Kiki Wetherbee.

I knew I was different, she said. One time, a bunch of kids followed me home, chanting, ‘Monster, monster.’ Mom said I should tell them ‘I may not be beautiful on the outside. But I am on the inside. You may not like me now, but someday you will.’

(Flash forward to the eighth grade when a boy came up to her and said, You don’t remember me, but I was one of the kids who followed you home that day. I still remember what you told us, and you were right.)

Wetherbee spent much of her childhood in surgery; twenty-four operations in all. When she turned five, Dr. Ted Huang, a renowned plastic surgeon at University of Texas, Galveston, performed an operation to bring her eyes closer together. It involved the removal of her forehead bone. He narrowed it and wired it back in place.

Finally, I could see straight, Wetherbee said.

Today she is sufficiently comfortable with her looks to work as a cashier at Wal-Mart, at least for the time being.

I don’t see myself working there for the rest of my life, she said. I want to go to art school and become a professional animator.

She’s been drawing since she was a little girl. Making art helps me to keep my imagination going. I have this passion to create something and to see how I improve with practice. I put all my heart and soul into it.

In addition, Wetherbee writes fantasy fiction. She’s created a character named Drago, whom she thinks of as an alter ego.

Drago is a picture of what I’d like to be. He’s a guardian. Like an angel. He’s fearless, the embodiment of love and compassion. His best friend is a dragon.

What have the years of social ostracism and painful surgery taught her?

My looks have made me appreciate what people are like on the inside rather than how they look on the outside, she said. "A couple of years ago, I was waiting for a bus in front of the capitol building. This woman walked by, pushing a stroller with a baby in it who had a bilateral cleft palate. I said, ‘I think your baby is beautiful.’

"She ignored me and just kept walking. Then she stopped, turned around, and looked at me. She said, ‘You had it too, didn’t you?’

I said, ‘Yeah. I did.’ And she said, ‘I think you’re beautiful too.’

James D. Chapman: The Buttonman Can

Life could not have been better for entrepreneur James D. Chapman. His company, Infinity Pro Painting, had won the bid to paint INVESCO Field, and he had jobs going on all over town. He was supporting a wife and five kids and making payments on a six-bedroom house in Northeast Denver.

But that was another life in another century, before a needless tragedy put him in a wheelchair and destroyed everything he’d spent a lifetime trying to build.

On a Friday night in January 2001, Chapman drove to the Shepherd Motel on East Colfax to pick up his wife. He parked his car, walked across the lot, and was accosted by some gangbangers who wanted to sell him drugs.

Do I look like a user? he said. Words were exchanged. Somebody pulled a knife.

We tussled, and I got it out of his hands, Chapman remembered. But then I got pushed down a flight of stairs and hit a wall. His wife found him sprawling on the concrete, unable to move. My back is burning, he told her. Call an ambulance.

He woke up two days later at Denver General.

The doctor told me I had a T-7 spinal cord injury and that I would probably never walk again, he said. They sent me home as soon as I could sit up in a wheelchair.

Determined to carry on despite the paralysis, Chapman had one of his foremen strap him into an ATV so he could drive around Mile High supervising the job. Big mistake. He ended up with an ulcerated tailbone that landed him in a nursing home.

This was the lowest point of my life, he said. The painting business went away. My employees took my equipment when they left.

He got behind on his mortgage and lost the house. His wife, unable to cope with so much bad news, walked out on him, taking her two sons from a previous marriage with her.

But Chapman is a fighter, and he fought back. He went to Craig Hospital as an outpatient and learned to drive a specially adapted car. He started drawing a social security check for $670 a month and managed to get a small two-bedroom apartment for himself and his kids through the state’s housing voucher program.

With time on his hands, he began thinking of creative ways to make a living. One day, he came across an old button machine he’d stashed in a storage closet and volunteered to make some buttons for a friend’s kid’s birthday party. He and his children were sitting around the kitchen table, cranking them out, when his daughter chirped, "Hey, Dad, you should be the buttonman."

A light went on in Chapman’s entrepreneurial brain. He went to Mile High United Way and got a grant that enabled him to buy a second button machine plus an inventory of 10,000 2 ¼ inch button blanks. The 2008 Democratic National Convention was months away, and Chapman started turning out Hillary and Obama buttons as fast as he could.

Whenever they were in town, I’d be there selling buttons at a buck a pop, he said. During the convention, I sold close to five thousand of them.

He plowed the money back into the business, bought computer programs and printer ink, and created a sideline of custom-printed T-shirts. Today he’s the proprietor of the Buttonman Gift Shop, where he sells buttons, T-shirts, caps, earrings, watches, and handbags. His slogan? The Buttonman Can!

If I was able to walk tomorrow, Chapman said, I would never walk away from the experiences that God and this wheelchair have led me to. Before the wheelchair, I was 10 percent community. Now I’m 90 percent community. I’m for prosperity and success for all members of my community, especially the black community. And especially the kids.

Star Ray Blake: jail time fosters a new ‘tude

The thing with the tats started when Star Ray Blake was fifteen. He did them on himself in the traditional way, using a sewing needle with thread wrapped around it to hold the ink. He began with his